‘Severely Ill’ Axl Rose Refuses to Cancel Guns N’ Roses Show

Axl Rose struggled through a Guns N’ Roses performance in Abu Dhabi last night (Nov. 26) after telling the crowd he’d been suffering sickness in the hours leading up to the show.

While the band have been delivering three-hour sets on their Not in This Lifetime tour, the concert was cut short (by their standards) after 16 songs as Rose ran out of tolerance, although he managed to squeeze in most of the tracks the crowd would have expected, starting with "It's So Easy" and including "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Sweet Child O' Mine" then ending with "November Rain." “They’ve got me on IVs and a bunch of injections because I got sick today,” he’d said at the start. “I’ve been throwing up for about the last five hours. Instead of canceling, we’re going to do the best show we can for you.”

You can watch Rose explaining his predicament below:

Afterwards, two of his bandmates commented on the situation. Slash tweeted, “Abu Dhabi, you guys were fucking great tonight! Axl was severely ill. But you all were hugely supportive. Thanks for that. We'll see again next time!” Duff McKagan said, “Thank you Abu Dhabi! Axl Rose pulled a damn miracle... the man was beyond ill, and pulled off something I've never seen in my 40 yrs of playing. You all pulled him thru. Til next time!”

The show tied in with the final event of this year’s Formula 1 motor racing season, which was won by Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton, who’d already secured his fifth world championship in a previous race. After his latest win Slash said, “Congrats to Lewis Hamilton for tonight's win in Abu Dhabi & championship #5! Fuckung awesome.”